By Viv Forbes
24 January 2020
Australian Fire-lighters come in six colours – yellow, black, white, blood red, dark green, and light green. All are relevant to bushfires and forest management.
Author: Admin
Government by Enquiry
By Viv Forbes
20 January 2020
Politicians hide behind enquiries – their magic answer to all problems, especially bushfires.
Announcing enquiries give the impression of decisive action, they generate fees for armies of barristers, lawyers and bureaucrats, and provide momentary excitement for the media.
The proposed 2020 Australian Bushfires corrobboree will provide a grandstand for the Climate Rebellion Mob who will get starring roles on ABC/Fairfax. Big business will probably propose a carbon tax to fight bushfires while foresters and land owners will hardly be heard.
When the final report is ultimately delivered, the media will be off trumpeting some new climate “emergency” to scare the public. The expensive new report will be quietly filed with all the others. Continue reading “Government by Enquiry”
Time for Climate Sense
By Viv Forbes
23 December 2019
Svante Arrhenius (1859-1927) was a Swedish scientist who first claimed that the burning of hydro-carbons like coal, oil, gas, peat and wood may cause global warming.
In 1895 he calculated (incorrectly) that a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration would lead to a 4-5o C rise in global temperature.
However, Arrhenius suggested that this increase could be beneficial, making the various climates on Earth “more equable” and stimulating plant growth and food production. Continue reading “Time for Climate Sense”
National Parks Breed Bushfires
By Viv Forbes
20 December 2019
Too many recent headlines say: “A fierce new bushfire is burning in the XYZ National Park. Nearby residents should prepare to evacuate.”
Neglected, overgrown, weed and log infested, un-grazed, unburnt, government-protected parkland is a danger to all neighbours. All it needs is a fire-bug, a fearful neighbour attempting a too-late back-burn, or a lightning strike, and a wildfire is inevitable, especially when the weather is hot, dry and windy. Wild-fires will not stay in their National Park. Continue reading “National Parks Breed Bushfires”
Brexit Done – Now for Clexit
By Viv Forbes
16 December 2019
Thanks to Boris Johnson, Brexit will now occur. And thanks to Donald Trump, the US will exit the destructive Paris Climate agreement. And the UN alarmists made little progress at the big climate-fest in Madrid.
It’s now time for Clexit (Climate Exit) – the great climate escape from all UN/IPCC alarmism and entanglements. Australia should join this rush for the exits.
Creating Bushfires
9 December 2019
By Viv Forbes
No one should be surprised that our bush is ablaze and our cities are smothered in smoke.
For decades now we have been locking up land, banning burn-offs and encouraging eucalypt fire-trees.
On a hot day, the blue haze on distant timbered hills is intensified by highly-flammable eucalypt oil vapour, waiting for a spark.
The Australian landscape of open forests and treeless grasslands was developed and maintained under an aboriginal regime of continual small fires. This was followed by planned cool-season burn-offs by European graziers.
But a few decades ago this safe black and white fire regime was replaced by green-worshippers who continually expanded the area of locked-up protected parks (now over 11% of Australia). Then they peppered private land with protected-vegetation fire hazards, and then hampered undergrowth clean-ups and burn-offs. Continue reading “Creating Bushfires”
A Message from Madrid – NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY
Media Release/Opinion Piece
7 December 2019
This week Clintel attended the Heartland COP 25 conference at the Marriott Hotel in Madrid. The hotel was full of champagne-drinking COP delegates who were clearly enjoying themselves (‘climate business model in action’). To be sure they were not disturbed by demonstrators, Clintel had a recording room somewhere at the back and we heard about its coordinates on the same morning.
Guus Berkhout was the first speaker at the event that was live-streamed from the Marriot Hotel. It was not an official COP25 event but a Heartland side-event with the aim to sound a different message to the world. Continue reading “A Message from Madrid – NO CLIMATE EMERGENCY”
Tempered by Fire
Tempered by Fire: Stories from the firefighters and Survivors of the 1961 Western Australian Bushfires is a book published by the Bushfire Front, edited by Roger Underwood, 2011.
See: https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/resources-2/historical-accounts/1961-2/
These 1961 fires razed four towns and wiped out hundreds of thousands of hectares of forests and farmland.
The stories are from people who fought these fires, were forced to flee from them, or who lost everything in their paths. Continue reading “Tempered by Fire”
A Nation Charred
House of Representatives – Select Committee Report into the 2002-03 Australian bushfires.
During the Summer of 2003, a total of almost four million hectares in the Australian Capital Territory and across five Australian states, were severely burned from wildfire.
The Committee heard a consistent message right around Australia:- Continue reading “A Nation Charred”
The NSW Far South Coast Fires in Review
By Ian Hitchcock, Dalmeny.
On New Year’s Eve, I woke early to the sound of television reports on the building fire risk. My wife, was worried about the worsening fire reports and the location of our residence in Eucalyptus Drive Dalmeny, in the middle of a eucalyptus forest.
At 9 AM our electricity supply failed. By 1 PM we had no Internet or mobile phone service. By 3PM our land line went down. We then turned to local radio for fire reports from the ever-reliable ABC South East. The station was nowhere to be found. A local commercial radio station did it’s best to disseminate useful information, but referred us to information available on an Internet that had failed hours earlier. A neighbour drove to the Dalmeny Fire station, only to learn that our valiant fire fighters were as ill-informed as the Dalmeny public on the status of the local fire front. Continue reading “The NSW Far South Coast Fires in Review”